High volume pharmacies process and fulfill a large number of prescriptions per day. These pharmacies often rely on automated systems to process, fill, and pack one or more prescriptions together for delivery to a patient. Some of the automated systems are configured to dispense unit of use products. A unit of use product is made for dispensing a drug to a patient without product packaging modification (or with minimal product packaging modification) except for labeling with patient information. Unit of use products can include a full course of medicine to be taken by a patient, for example, an entire prescription (e.g., a thirty-day supply, a sixty-day supply, or a ninety-day supply). The unit of use products contain known quantities of medication in packages that are closed and sealed by, for example, the pharmaceutical manufacturer. Dispensing unit of use products greatly limits the need for manual or automated filling of open prescription containers with drug that are first counted and then sealed at the pharmacy.
Despite the decrease in manual or automated filling, the high volume pharmacies still use skilled labor to dispense the unit of use products to patients. For example, pharmacy technicians must record receipt of shipments of unit of use products. The unit of use products are warehoused for a period and then moved to a production floor for temporary storage. The pharmacy depends on labor to store and move the products for eventual dispensing.
For automated dispensing of unit of use products, current machines have dedicated channels for each unit of use product. When many unit of use products are to be dispensed, technicians configure an entire array of channels, each dedicated to one type of unit of use product. The dedicated channels are typically configured to fit the dimensions of the particular unit of use product to avoid an incorrect orientation that causes a machine error and inhibits automated dispensing. Even if all of the dedicated channels are designed, manufactured and configured perfectly for the unit of use products, the pharmacy utilizes labor to stock and restock the dedicated channels. Additionally, inventory of each of the unit of use products must be stocked in every channel to avoid inhibiting the automation.